In order for me to explain what happened on Friday the 13th, you must know that the New Pudge is not the Old Pudge. The dog we accepted as our beloved and long lost pet was not him. Don' t think less of us because we didn't know our own dog, understand that we were heartbroken. We wanted it to be him, and he wanted to be our dog. What we thought was his bad behavior from being loose was actually a dog that hadn't been properly trained. We thought he was furrier from the winter weather, and skinnier from lack of food, but he is just a furrier and slightly smaller dog than we had. When he buried his head in my husband's lap, it wasn't because he knew Mark, but because he wanted to be his dog. And he is. We call him Buddy, and he's one of us now.
On Friday March 13, I was supposed to be cleaning the house while Mark was at work and the kids at school. Instead, I was enjoying the first spring day. I took the dogs for a walk, and then took the duck for a walk. The duck loves to follow me, so we went back to the pond t0 see if the frogs and toads had come out of hibernation. When I got there, I noticed something in the water.
Time was very slow, because the sun was warm and it was a day without responsibilities and I was out near the woods. I was trying to decide if the kids had tossed a pumpkin in the pond, or if it was a really big turtle, or what it could possibly be. It was too far out for me to get to it, so I stood around and wondered for about five minutes. Suddenly, I knew what it was, and with that understanding, time accelerated. I was looking at fur, and my dog went missing eight weeks ago, and I had said things like, "He would never run away," and "If he's alive, he will make it back to us." I knew instantly that my dog had done his last deed for us, chasing a deer through the yard, and had gone on the ice, and had fallen through. I knew how he spent his last minutes. I knew that he hadn't ever left us, and had been waiting for us frozen at the bottom of the pond until the first spring thaw.
I tried to wade out, but the water level was so high that my boots filled with icy water. I ran to get Grandpa Schenimann's row boat because I had to get my boy out of the water right away. I needed to do this without question and immediately, like the urge to throw up. My husband would have to dig the grave, and he shouldn't have to do this too. I didn't want the children to see their pet this way. But most importantly, our dog had waited long enough.
The one oar in the boat was broken; It was essentially a long handled stick. I got out to him and tried to push him to shore. This didn't work, it just pushed me away from him. He was too heavy for me to lift into the boat without tipping. I finally realized that I would have to use my oar like a fulcrum, resting it on the side of the boat and sliding it under his belly. I was able to lever him up, crying and talking to him. I was afraid to look at his face, that it would be marred somehow. But when he came up, he landed in the boat with his face resting on the seat, as if he were simply resting there.
He looked like him. He looked nothing like Buddy, and I wondered how we could have ever confused them. He had a lot of sand in his fur, and one eye was closed, and he was beautiful. It really was Pudge. Morbidly, I wanted to take a last photo of him. I thought of all the people who've fished out their beloved family members and lovers from ponds and rivers and lakes, and how that would be more terrible than this.
As hard as it was, getting Pudge from the pond and then buried in his sodden clay grave was not what he needed, but exactly what we needed, a laborious physical service that we did for him. Mark chose a spot down in the woods, and we all took turns with the mud-heavy shovels. We wanted to know what happened to him, and we wanted his remains to bury at home. We got both.
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